Wolf Hollow (7 page)

“And you didn't see anyone up there when this happened?”

I shook my head. “I was looking at the horses and Mr. Ansel. And then I was looking at Ruth.” And that was when my lips began to tremble.

“Okay, Annabelle,” my father said, his hand on my head. “It's okay. We don't have to talk about this right now.” But he turned and looked up the hill again, and I knew there would be more to come.

Ruth lost her eye. It was as simple as that.

I heard about it later that night from my mother. Most mothers might have waited until morning to deliver such news, but not my mother. She knew that I would have nightmares, regardless. Everything was about to get worse, and waiting to face it would not change that.

“It could have been me,” I told my mother when she came and sat on the edge of my bed in the dark and told me that the doctor had not been able to repair Ruth's eye. That no one could have repaired it. The rock had ruined the parts that Ruth needed in order to see. That's how my mother put it.

“Yes,” she said, stroking my hair. “It could have been you, Annabelle. But I think that rock was meant for Mr. Ansel or his grays or even his apples. Not you. Not Ruth.”

“Why do you think that?”

My mother sighed. “Well, Mr. Ansel is German, Annabelle, and a lot of people around here are angry with the Germans. Have been since the last big war but especially now that we're in another one. It's not the first time someone has tried to do him harm, though before this they took it out on his crops or his truck. Broke windows. Put dead rats in his mailbox.”

“But Mr. Ansel has lived here most of his life,” I said.

“I know that. And you know that. But for some people it doesn't make any difference. He's the nearest thing they have, and they want someone to blame.”

“Who does?”

My mother chewed on her lip. Didn't look at me. “People who have lost sons or fathers or brothers in the war. This one or the last one. People who fought in the war and came home angry or hurt. And really most everyone, since we all know soldiers over there right now, in harm's way, because of the Germans.”

I thought about the gold stars on the flag at the church, one for each husband or brother or son who wouldn't come back to us. I thought about Toby: his silence and his guns.

“But how could anybody in the hollow know that Mr. Ansel would be passing through just then? They had to be on the hill already.”

My mother shrugged. “I don't know, Annabelle. I only know that no one was trying to hurt Ruth. What happened to her was just bad luck.”

Which only made things worse. How was anyone supposed to stand up straight and open-eyed when luck could decide everything?

The next day started hard and got harder.

Breakfast was a quiet meal. Even my brothers were subdued. I didn't give a thought to anything but Ruth and what school would be like without her that day.

Despite myself, I began to cry, but as quietly as I could.

Aunt Lily said, “Oh, and what is it now that's worth such tears?”

My grandmother said, without looking at her, “Even Jesus wept, Lily,” to which Aunt Lily replied, “And with good reason, which is more than I can say about this business.”

“You mean Ruth losing her eye?” my mother said, some vinegar on her tongue. “You mean
that
business?”

At which Aunt Lily said, somewhat peevishly, “Well, if that's the root of it I suppose I misjudged the bloom.”

Aunt Lily was always saying things like that, but admitting that she was wrong was a rare thing.

I didn't say anything at all.

James and Henry ate their breakfast like puppies, noisy and quick.

But my father drank his coffee slowly, his face grim, somewhere else.

“Stay away from the road and the hill at recess,” he said before the boys and I went out the door. “Keep to the other side of the schoolhouse, by the woods. I mean to find out what happened to Ruth. Until then, don't go near the hill. Do you understand me?”

Yes
, we nodded.

“Mind your sister,” he told the boys, which was like telling them to fly to the moon.

But the boys, too, surprised me, waiting until we reached the fields on the downslope above Wolf Hollow before breaking away at a run to spook a grouse at the edge of the woods and then disappearing down the path into the trees without me.

When the path turned and I saw Betty sitting on a stump ahead, I was filled with regret that the reprieve I'd had was over and I was again to be her target.

But then I felt something else rise in its place.

I can't call it courage, since that's what people have when they are scared but do a hard thing regardless.

And I can't call it anger, though I'd been angry at Betty for the bruises she'd given me and the threats she'd made and the quail she'd killed.

I suppose I should have been both afraid and angry, but Ruth had lost her eye the day before, and what I felt now, looking at Betty's empty face, was more like indifference. She seemed, on that morning, insignificant and small, even as she stepped out in front of me.

“What?” I said impatiently.

She looked at me curiously. “Did you think I would leave you alone just because that crazy man told me to? Or because your little friend got hurt?”

“She got more than hurt,” I said. “She lost her eye, Betty. Did you know that?”

Betty looked away. “My grandma told me. I'll bet someone was aiming for that filthy German. Not her.”

“Mr. Ansel isn't filthy,” I said. “You don't even know him.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Way out here in these woods you might not know much, but I do. He might act all nice and jolly, but Germans are bullies who aim to take over the world. And they will if they can.”

I noticed a long red thread of fresh scab across Betty's cheek, as if she'd been in brambles, and her socks were stuck all over with sticktights. I thought it odd that she'd been out in the rough so early in the day. And so soon after the ivy had laid her low.

“You're the only bully I know, Betty,” I said. “But you're going to leave me alone now. And not because Toby said so. And not because Ruth got hurt. You just will. I'm not going to give you anything. I'm not going to worry about you. I'm not going to run away from you. I'm just not. So you might as well leave me alone and get on with something else.”

I waited, looking her full in the face, determined not to cut this short. I wanted to be done with Betty. If she was going to hurt me, she could hurt me right then and there, and I could finally do something about it before the day was out.

But she didn't do anything except spend another moment, thoughtful. And then she stepped aside.

I wasn't relieved. I wasn't happy about being left alone. I wasn't anything much. Just so sad, and tired in a way I'd never been before. I wanted nothing more than to hide in the hayloft in the barn and watch the rock doves napping in the rafters. To close my eyes and think about nothing at all. Not Ruth. Not Mr. Ansel. Not Germans. And not Betty Glengarry.

But if I couldn't retreat to the barn, school was the next best thing, and I gave myself over to my lessons. Andy didn't come to school that morning, so Benjamin reclaimed his customary seat; no one sat with me as Ruth usually did, and we all passed the morning quietly.

When recess came, I sat on the steps with some of the other girls, making crowns from long grass and supposing what Ruth might be doing instead. The whole while I kept an eye on my brothers, but they didn't go near the road or the hill on the other side of it. As usual, they spent their time racing each other from here to there, making mud pies in the dirt around the well, and throwing rocks through the forks of trees.

Betty stood and watched them with her arms crossed. She never played. Usually she went off somewhere with Andy, but today, without him, she sat by herself and waited for recess to be over. Today she seemed more intent than usual. But she did not look at me once the whole time, so I paid her little attention in return.

And then, just as Mrs. Taylor called us back in to school, Andy came strolling into the yard.

Betty went to meet him halfway across the clearing, and they spent a moment together, talking, glancing at me as they did, before following us into school. I wondered what they were saying and what it had to do with me.

For the rest of the day, Andy and Betty passed notes and looks, ignored Mrs. Taylor when she asked them to join her at the chalkboard for arithmetic, and were the first two out the door when she dismissed us.

By the time I left the schoolhouse, they were nowhere in sight.

I didn't mind, then, when my brothers took off for home, racing each other up the hill and out of sight by the time I made it to the first turn in the path.

I heard them, though. First the sound of them racing away. The thud of their feet. A breathless
hey!
The mumble of loose pebbles on the path. Then a stretch of silence as they put more distance between us. And then a scream. And then Henry calling my name.

I ran to them up that hill as if it were flat ground.

I found Henry kneeling over James, who lay on his back in the path, crying, his forehead covered in blood.

I dropped to my knees beside them.

“I don't know what happened,” Henry said. “James was ahead of me and he just suddenly fell back and started to cry.”

“No, I didn't just fall down,” James wailed, rolling onto his belly and pushing up onto his knees. He pointed along the path and there, just ahead, was a wire strung tight between two trees.